It shows that at last a reasonable and steady view of the matter is becoming prevalent among us.

Tolstoy, Leo -- Anna Karenina

the prevalence of illiteracy in Mississippi;

Kathryn Stockett -- The Help

Show more

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

Henry David Thoreau -- Resistance to Civil Government

"I think it’ll hold things off long enough for the people to forget some of the unhappiness that’s been so prevalent lately and for us to come up with a way to address issues if they pop up again."

Kiera Cass -- The Heir

It was a sentiment prevalent in the community.

Scott Pratt -- An Innocent Client

I found less evidence of the "rich man’s war / poor man’s fight" attitude in soldiers’ letters than I expected, given the prevalence of this theme in recent scholarship.

James M. McPherson -- What They Fought For - 1861-1865

THE PEOPLE [OF NEW YORK]-WHY THE PEOPLE ARE MAGNIFICENT; IN THEIR CARRIAGES, WHICH ARE NUMEROUS, IN THEIR HOUSE FURNITURE, WHICH IS FINE, IN THEIR PRIDE AND CONCEIT, WHICH ARE INIMITABLE, IN THEIR PROFANENESS, WHICH IS INTOLERABLE, IN THE WANT OF PRINCIPLE, WHICH IS PREVALENT, AND IN THEIR TORYISM, WHICH IS INSUFFERABLE.

Laurie Halse Anderson -- Chains

For Liberian parents in America, the prevalence of gangs in Clarkston—and their potential allure to young Liberian men—created a bitter paradox.

Warren St. John -- Outcasts United

Show more again

Here and there we passed Cszeks and slovaks, all in picturesque attire, but I noticed that goitre was painfully prevalent.

Bram Stoker -- Dracula

It was prevalent everywhere.

Charles Dickens -- A Tale of Two Cities

[1] Unhealthy regions, noted for the prevalence of malarial fevers in summer.

Dante Alighieri -- Dante’s Inferno

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story—that is to say, thirty or forty years ago.

Mark Twain -- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Commonly uttered by the host of a meal, it is a holdover from days when poisoning of guests was prevalent among the clans.

Christopher Paolini -- Eldest

But colds were never so prevalent as they have been this autumn.

Jane Austen -- Emma

His parents went to eight-o’clock mass every morning in Gardiner Street and the peaceful odour of Mrs. Dillon was prevalent in the hall of the house.

James Joyce -- Dubliners

The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts, was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow.

Washington Irving -- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

I shall do whatever they do at Paris, madame, if I have the good fortune to find some one who will initiate me into the prevalent ideas of amusement.

Alexandre Dumas -- The Count of Monte Cristo

It is like water to fish, so prevalent that it goes unseen and unquestioned.

William P. Young -- The Shack

For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle.

Herman Melville -- Moby Dick

It was the prevalent opinion, however, that they had been influenced by veneration for the ancient treaty, that had once made them dependent on the Six Nations for military protection, and now rendered them reluctant to encounter their former masters.

James Fenimore Cooper -- The Last of the Mohicans

It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir of his own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen or twenty, in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families.

Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables

Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery.

Upton Sinclair -- The Jungle

After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than on the field of Olmutz where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time abroad, but there was still the same bewitching combination of majesty and mildness in his fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the same capacity for varying expression and the same prevalent appearance of goodhearted innocent youth.

Leo Tolstoy -- War and Peace

Putting a glass of hot gin-and-water on the chimney-piece, he drew his chair to the fire; and, with sundry moral reflections on the too-prevalent sin of discontent and complaining, composed himself to read the paper.

Charles Dickens -- Oliver Twist

It shows that at last a reasonable and steady view of the matter is becoming prevalent among us.

Leo Tolstoy -- Anna Karenina

Authorities were somewhat divided, as to the outward form of the spirit, owing to a custom quite prevalent among negroes,—and, for aught we know, among whites, too,—of invariably shutting the eyes, and covering up heads under blankets, petticoats, or whatever else might come in use for a shelter, on these occasions.

Harriet Beecher Stowe -- Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Kansas abolished capital punishment in 1907; in 1935, due to a sudden prevalence in the Midwest of rampaging professional criminals (Alvin "Old Creepy" Karpis, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Clyde Barrow and his homicidal sweetheart, Bonnie Parker), the state legislators voted to restore it.

Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood

Before going there I had a good deal of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labour.

Booker T. Washington -- Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

He could defend many institutions better than any philosopher, because, in describing them as they concerned him, he gave the true reason for their prevalence, and speculation had not suggested to him any other.

Henry David Thoreau -- Walden

Scientists who have studied faces, for example, report that there are huge differences among people in the location of facial muscles, in their form, and also — surprisingly — even in their prevalence.

Malcolm Gladwell -- The Tipping Point

Chauvelin took another pinch of snuff: he seemed very much addicted to that pernicious habit, so prevalent in those days; perhaps, too, he found the taking of snuff a convenient veil for disguising the quick, shrewd glances with which he strove to read the very souls of those with whom he came in contact.

Baroness Orczy -- The Scarlet Pimpernel

It was her idea most definitely that we must go first to central Europe, where the vampire seemed most prevalent.

Anne Rice -- Interview with the Vampire

No, but he was wholly without irrational fear of it, a fear more prevalent in highly civilized communities than those so-called barbarous ones which in all respects stand nearer to unadulterate Nature.

Herman Melville -- Billy Budd

The only circumstance which gave me any new hope, was my aunt’s stopping on the stairs to inquire about a smell of fire that was prevalent there; and janet’s replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt.

Charles Dickens -- David Copperfield

The prevalent silence seemed to contain a faint sound, explicable as a breathing, or a sobbing, which came from the other end of the building.

Thomas Hardy -- Jude the Obscure

Distinct from either there appeared a stranger—a young man of remarkably pleasant aspect—who carried in his hand a carpet-bag of the smart floral pattern prevalent in such articles at that time.

Thomas Hardy -- The Mayor of Casterbridge

He thought no longer, "Can I get on with people?" but "Are they stronger than I?" breathing the prevalent miasma.

E.M. Forster -- A Passage to India

I need not say how rejoiced I shall be to hear there has been any mistake, but the report is so prevalent that I confess I cannot help trembling.

Jane Austen -- Mansfield Park

It is a great deal too prevalent nowadays.

Oscar Wilde -- An Ideal Husband

About the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meagre, miserly fellow, of the name of Tom Walker.

Washington Irving -- The Devil and Tom Walker

The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and of meeting it in the key of pleasantry prevalent among her new friends, was deeply humiliating to Lily.

Edith Wharton -- The House of Mirth

It fits with a prevalent theory.

Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Identity

…him against the wishes of her friends, who considered the match beneath her; that my grandfather Reed was so irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without a shilling; that after my mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town where his curacy was situated, and where that disease was then prevalent: that my mother took the infection from him, and both died within a month of each other.

Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre

Besides Mr. Bounderby’s gold spoon which was generally received in Coketown, another prevalent fiction was very popular there.

Charles Dickens -- Hard Times

’It was the prevalent theory at the time,’ interrupted the ambassador.

Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Supremacy

They aren’t quite the prevalent audience for my book.

Jodi Picoult -- Change of Heart

At feasts and festivals also, in firmaments she has often graced, and among constellations she outshone but yesterday, she is still the prevalent subject.

Charles Dickens -- Bleak House

If this be true, how are political errors, once prevalent, ever to be corrected?The President of the United States is not subject to quite the same test of political courage as a Senator.